


Do You Remember?

by 13thSyndicate



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: I don't even ship it, M/M, What if fic, Y!Eraqus/Y!Xehanort, but what if, idek, implied ships, one-sided Eraqus/Xehanort, one-sided Terraqua implied, one-sided ships, understated ships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-14 08:19:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4557459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13thSyndicate/pseuds/13thSyndicate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Do you remember? I do. Long lazy days in the courtyard, reading under the sky, watching the clouds drift slowly by in the breeze, casting shadows that turned the training grounds into a hypnotic chessboard of light and shadow, like the one we used to play on,  in those forgotten halcyon days."</p><p>Why would Eraqus ever let Xehanort anywhere near his students, after what happened?</p><p>Maybe he still had a thing for his best friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do You Remember?

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even ship it, I really don't. Or I didn't. But this what-if started niggling at the back of my brain, and I had to write it down.

Do you remember? I do. Long lazy days in the courtyard, reading under the sky, watching the clouds drift slowly by in the breeze, casting shadows that turned the training grounds into a hypnotic chessboard of light and shadow, like the one we used to play on, in those forgotten halcyon days. Quizzing each other, firing riddles likes spells at each other, one after another, rapidfire, call and response, both those with answers written in our books and those with answers penned nowhere, two who would someday be Masters trading words like blows.

I remember, also, the fights, both on the training grounds and off. The solid feeling as metal met metal, Key met Key, and the sort of dialogue that could be found in the dance. When one moves with a partner, the Master would say, one learns more about oneself. You and I danced that dance until we knew each others' minds like the halls of the castle we called home, well-used passageways free of dust and worn from the prints of our restless feet. Worn passageways with twists and turns that we could spring on each other at a moments notice – our arguments were rarely loud, but they were legendary, and the Master remembered them well even upon his deathbed. Our knowledge of each other was a deadly weapon, for we could read each other like the pages of a familiar book. Or at least – I thought we did. Now, I doubt that I ever knew you as well as you surely knew me, old friend.

You yearned for the world beyond your island home, yearned for something greater than the same old everyday. Training with the Master was like a dream for you, but did not realize your ambition. Did you think I never knew of the times you snuck away, using your Keyblade to carry you from world to world, restlessly seeking newer and greater things? Did you ever know that I covered for you, when the Master asked your location? Did you ever know that I saw you, slipping closer to the darkness, saw the toll it began to take on your body and mind? I did. I knew all those things. Now, I wish I had spoken, begged and pleaded with you, even raised my voice to you as I envisioned so many times, but I could not. You were my hero, my role model. You were my friend. If ever there were one strong enough to stand up to the corrupting influence of Darkness, it was you. I didn't feel it was my place to comment. I didn't feel I had the right to intervene. Perhaps, if I were not such a coward, this would have been prevented.

I have a student, much like you, you know. He is strong and courageous and yearns for larger things. He dreams of becoming a hero – a naive, hopeless dream that he pursues with all his giant heart. Yet in that heart, I see shadows. Shadows like yours, the hunger, the ambition that drove you into the darkness and away from home, and I yearn to reach out and pull him back from what I see as the brink of a cliff. Perhaps, I am too harsh towards him, and yet I cannot let up. I cannot let him fall, not the way that you did. I could not bear to see him reach out and scar a friend, could not bear to see in his eyes the same madness I saw in yours that day.

We were curious children, much like my two apprentices are now. We explored ancient knowledge as you explored the world outside. Oh, how I envied you once! To have the courage to disobey the Master's orders, to set off for greener pastures and to see the worlds with my own eyes, I would do anything for those things. Do you remember, how you once told me you envied me? For the peace with which I viewed the world, the strong sense I held of right and wrong, you said you would gladly give all that you had ever had. Do you remember my surprise? Perhaps not. My mind was always an open book to you, but to fathom the heart of any being has always escaped you, and it is to that that perhaps I owe both my survival and my scars.

You and I explored many things together, old friend, in those eternal summer days caught in the precipice between light and dark. I remember those times all too clearly, the days we explored another way to move together, in the forgotten places, away from the prying eyes of our Master. It was only at your encouragement that I was able to throw away the Master's warnings, and above them, the taboos of my world, but you were always the one to give me courage. There were things that passed between us in those forgotten hours that needed no words, no thoughts. We were barely more than children, then, boys coming into manhood without an understanding of what it meant. I wonder if you ever knew how much those days meant to me? But your heart always belonged to the stars, and mine to my books, and all of that is past and gone now, no more than empty memories to be illuminated, briefly, by thought, and then to dance away again, ephemeral as the dust that sparkles in the light of the hallway windows only to fall, litter the ground, and be swept away.

Still, there are passages I avoid even now, where the dust lays thick on the floor and chokes the air, as too many memories can choke the throat. I always did feel more than you, you said to me once, and it is the truth – oh, the things I wish that I had once had the courage to say aloud! Some days I catch a glimpse of those times, out of the corner of my eye, a flash of white hair followed by brown, or the corners of my ears, carefree laughter and the sounds of running feet.

There is a girl here now, you know, and she and my other apprentice run and laugh and play as well, and the dusty corridors are perhaps not so dusty anymore, and I turn a blind eye to their harmless wanderings so long as they leave the Master's forbidden books alone. They remind me of better days, when you were still at my side, before the Master's choice drove you away, deep into the darkness. I have sworn to never make that mistake – when I choose my Successor, I will impart the Knowledge to both of them, should Terra not choose to follow the same dark path which you have walked. The two of them are inseparable; for one to make Master and the other not would devastate the both of them. They are much like us. 

I know that they, too, have snuck away when no one is looking – perhaps to explore the same forbidden secrets that we once did, perhaps also to gaze at the stars and speculate as to the nature of the unnumbered worlds, to read, to lie in silence and speak in a language which had no need for words. Aqua is like me – studious, steadfast, loyal; if a rule is to be broken, it is Terra who has the courage to dare it. Aqua follows my teachings; perhaps a bit too closely, I feel, as I think back to the ways you danced on the line between the Master's teachings and the void of oblivion. It was one of the things I admired in you. But I tell myself it is for the best. Aqua is not like me – if Terra were to take your path, she would not hesitate to speak up, to say something. She is not the coward that I was. If Terra follows you, Aqua will save him the way I could not save you, old friend.

She is a bit too like me, in love with her books and her learning. Terra is the one that pines here, and she the one whose heart is closed to all but the starry sky. I hope beyond hope that this will not force them apart. There is a reason some knowledge is forbidden to those who bear Keys, but cannot Master them. To Master a Key is to master one's own heart. Until then, all else is a danger. Those were the Master's words, and in my age, I now know them to be wise.

If you were to return home, I would have no choice but to welcome you with open arms, and that would be the wrong decision. I have never been able to say no to you; no matter how I resolve to test you, to turn you away unless you prove your commitment to the Light, I would accept you back. Brothers we might be now, and perhaps that is all we ever were, in your eyes, but there was more, once – in days where we stared up at the clouds and asked each other questions with no answers and played games of chess with the emblems borne by Masters past and future.

Do you remember, Xehanort?

I do.


End file.
